I find the idea of separating failure into either failure of character, or failure in competence to be misleading. With the emphasis of character in all aspects of Army leadership training, the idea that the character of a leader does not contribute to their overall considered competency goes against the doctrine, and academic study into this very area. In my most humble opinion and experience, any leader I have witnessed or considered to be incompetent in an area or overall, I considered them that way as I believed they had made an error in their moral character. A simple choice generally, of their action or inaction, and clearly visible throughout their interactions. In this piece, I will focus specifically on the officer corps in Army, and outline how I believe the education and build of character already exists within Army, but how we contradict ourselves when it comes to application through an often black and white application of policy, a removal of our human aspect when it comes to dealing with other humans, and our continued encouragement in the officer stream to compete with each other for a higher place on the board. I will further outline why I believe competence and character are linked, and that a leader cannot be considered competent in leadership without a good understanding and application of character, ethics and morals.

The newer ADF-P-0 – Character in the Profession of Arms offers a definition for character as simple as being intrinsically motivated to choose between right and wrong actions. (ADF-P-0 – Character in the Profession of Arms, 2023, p. 6) MAJ Richard Thapthimthong (2017), in his research project discusses the varied definitions of character as defined in some legacy Army doctrine, online definitions, anecdotes and the like. The explanation I felt most relevant to my points is simply “Character is easily recognisable in a person, though to define it is difficult” (Thapthimthong, 2017). It is often the first assessment one makes either posting into a new unit, or when a new leader posts into your unit – What are they like? Are they a good person, or are they a policy robot? It then becomes very difficult to describe how you came to that conclusion – technically, the leader/boss hasn’t done “the wrong thing”, and quite frankly stays well within the black and white lines of policy, but their actions overall as a leader give you no confidence in their emotional intelligence, possibly no motivation to work harder and a biased view of your corps, your trade and possibly even Defence. This is how I reconcile the opinion that a failure in character is indeed a failure in competence, as the education and training framework exists for Defence’s future leaders to recognise that character and emotional intelligence is vital to lead the soldiers of today.

Training

Within our officer training continuum, there is hundreds of learning periods dedicated to subjects such as leadership, character, ethics, emotional intelligence- almost every career course has you complete a personality profile, and has a guest speaker or core reading that addresses how vital it is to be an officer of good character in the profession of arms. The most infamous and confronting demonstration of character development training and feedback probably remains Exercise Shaggy Ridge at RMC-D, which aims to put staff cadets in a position of extreme stress due to fatigue, food deprivation and endless menial tasks with the expectation that every cadet remains a team player and a solid leader – a task that is designed to show you your failures in character, to show you in raw form how you respond under pressure and fatigue. The feedback an officer gets from Shaggy Ridge would have to be some of the most important feedback some will ever receive – in conducting the most basic of tasks, in which limited skill mastery is required nor mental cohesion, how can you conduct yourself in front of a team of your peers? In this sense, what determines “competency” on what is essentially an extreme leadership exercise, is not actually technical mastery in soldier skills, nor your ability to write and deliver orders, brief a commander or any other role an officer might be expected to play in a field environment- what determines failure here, is a failure in your character.

This exercise is a training model indeed very similar to Norway, where our equivalent trainee counterparts at the Norwegian Military Academy over a three year course are trained along three elements, being personal proficiency, subject matter proficiency and social proficiency. It is described by the Norwegian Military Academy that “officer competency is the result of the development of character within the personal proficiency, the subject matter proficiency, and the social proficiency” (Boe, 2015) Basically, through training the development of a cadet’s character in these three fields, a trainee officer is then only successful and deemed competent once their character is assessed to have developed. In our training institutions, RMC-D long ago realised the importance of building officers with a strong character foundation alongside building competence as a junior officer holistically, and ADFA joined into this thinking through their own annual leadership challenges. While the ADFA Leadership Challenges 1-3 change probably a lot more frequently than Shaggy Ridge to suit a tri-service environment, the principles remain the same- putting officer cadets of all three services under some significant strain and fatigue, watching and assessing how they react and providing feedback as to their character. There isn’t much assessment in the way of technical competence, as all officer cadets are largely untrained for their role, and yet their competence as a leader is still assessed through an assessment of character.

The most obvious failure of character?

A common question asked in a leadership module, is to picture the best and worst leaders come across in careers so far- and be prepared to explain why. Many times, similar comments are made that the worst leader the individual had come across is “technically competent, but incredibly poor character/emotional intelligence.” This is then often linked to the leader in question demanding a standard while failing to maintain the standard themselves, or an application of policy to one soldier that is overlooked for themselves, or another more favourite soldier. In considering this, technically in whichever trade or corps this kind of leader was observed in, the person making the assessment inadvertently links competence to character, usually agreeing that technical competence is only one aspect to leadership. The most technically competent officer in the Australian Army in their craft, I suggest, can very easily be considered to have failed in leadership through relying solely on their physical or technical ability. In the eyes of their peers and subordinates, if a leader fails to make a positive impact or impression, personally or socially, it will never matter how good they are, technically, at their job. The previously mentioned ADF-P-0 – Character in the Profession of Arms links character and emotional intelligence, with character as the foundation, and emotional intelligence as the framework upon which leadership can be based (2023, p.27). With an ever-present crisis in retention of ADF personnel at the junior leadership ranks, I would suggest that the overall view of what makes a leader competent must drastically shift to include character as part of the assessment and the conversation.

Competitiveness in the Officer Cohort- breeding poor character?

My final thoughts in posing the idea that a failure of character is a failure in competence in a leadership role is towards the culture of competitiveness in the officer cohorts. I challenge this begins as early as ADFA/RMC (dependent on pathway), where officer and staff cadets are encouraged to basically vie for top spot, top ten and top third of their cohort. Particularly when a certain corps may be the most desirable to that cohort, and the class is told there are twice as many first preferences for that corps, to spots available for that graduating class. In my own experience, our class staff would quite cheerfully approach the cohort who had listed Intelligence or Armoured as their first preference, and inform them that other certain members of their class were the ones to ‘beat’ as such. This, leading into the final units of RMC-D that talk about soldier management, administrative tasks and other leadership and character units that are vital for the first few years as a junior officer, then turn into a dash to get better marks than our peers as it is one of the final opportunities to score well. Once corps are allocated, it doesn’t end there – it becomes all about the better scoring cadets to pick their desired posting localities first, and there seems to be few instances where every cadet can agree.

Following initial officer training, those same cohorts then disappear to ROBC, where they are in competition for student of merit – in a couple of corps, still competing for preferred units and locations. We are then encouraged to compete against our peers in that unit to be 1 out of 5 LTs, and ‘fight to get’ – I am sure this changes slightly with the new PAR, however even after ranking of ranked soldiers and officers within units was taken away in 2022, units would still conduct those same board of studies and still start considering soldiers and officers ranked in cohorts, in the same way that our career managers look at us. We still find ourselves ingrained in trying to vainly make our assessing officer think of us as better than any other officer they have ever had, and we look for ways to make ourselves look better – but something has to give to make this first priority.

I appreciate friendly rivalries are culturally significant, particularly within Australian culture, and I am not suggesting that personnel should not be recognised as higher performers, or encouraged to perform better- but the following risk here is that some will care far more than others about where they are ranked, and will behave accordingly to get their desired ranking within their peers. What happens next? We are then encouraged to fight against each other for deployments that these days, are few and far between. We start taking on extra courses, extra proficiencies to make ourselves have a better career profile than the other officers applying – and we start measuring competence through numbers of proficiencies, or time spent in role rather than the type of leader they are. We start tracking our competency and suitability for a deployment that is all about personnel management (such as an ADJT position) or external liaison (various UN missions), and we make it about all the tangible qualifications we can prove on PMKeys– range qualifications, gender focal point courses, professional development courses – all important capabilities for junior leaders, but it matters more the proficiency itself, rather than what we were supposed to take away from those courses in the first place.

We then rise through OC time, and start caring more about black and white policy, and quantitative data to make our companies/squadrons look better than the others to the CO – and how did we get here? Because we cared more about numbers, and grades, and quantity of output all the way back at initial training. We fostered a type of rivalry that builds in every PAR we get, every deployment we were not successful in nominating for, and every career course that we are ranked against our syndicate members. After this build-up of over 10 years for most, why are we then surprised when our leaders seem to lack the character and courage of conviction they initially were taught and showed in training?

In summary, I believe that a failure in competence is directly correlated to a failure in character. I challenge that a subordinate who considers their leader to have failed in their duty, couldn’t care less if they had made an error in paperwork, or a mistaken order – but if that leader fails to be a leader intrinsically, shows poor character and cares more about their performance on paper than the people in front of them, that is the failure in competence that is noted and remembered. I believe this is fostered all the way from initial training in the officer corps, and that the training and modules exist to build a strong moral base in these training institutions, but our attitude towards competitiveness lets us down as soon as we are put under the reporting microscope.